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Artemis Delathane
Early Life When Abreus Delathane lost his wife, he felt for a moment like his life had ended. His heart was broken and his soul lost in a mire of pain. In a moment, however, his life was restored to him as the midwife placed the crying infant girl in his arms. He could have blamed her for her mother's death. Instead, he saw in her wet eyes a new life... his new life, and he swore to the fates to see it through to its end. A hunter by trade, Abreus saw two things in his daughter as she grew: her mother's smile and his stubborn determination. He did not know how to be a young girl, so he taught her instead the things that he did know, how to live off of the land, what tracks belonged to what beasts, and when to release an arrow amidst her breaths. The latter was her favorite part. When she drew back her bow, Artemis felt her strongest. Although she knew other children in Oakwood, Artemis never had much time for them. She preferred the company of her father, the sounds of the forest, and the stillness of the wind beneath the trees. She never felt alone, because even when he gave her a good lead while she was learning to track, Abreus was never far from her side. Their time together was her most prized, and she hoped that it would never end. Unfortunately, the fates had another journey in mind for the young girl. Less than two months past her ninth birthday, she and her father were hunting in the north woods when a stag bearing one of her arrows broke into a run, unwilling to die in place. Exhilarated with the hunt, she did not hear or heed her father's warnings as she charged after the beast. Before she realized what was happening, she had crossed the boundaries of the forest and stood in the open, gazing on the foothills of the Ogre March. Without thinking, she called for her father. Her voice carried farther than normal, with no trees to stop it. She turned around to look to the forest, waiting for her Abreus to step out into the light. Before he could appear, however, she heard noises behind her, grunting, growling words that she did not understand. She turned to see a half-dozen goblins and two larger creatures she was too frightened to identify bearing down on her. Artemis froze until a hand swung her around towards the trees. She heard her father's voice order her to run echoed by the sounds of a bow string, an arrow hitting meat, and a howl of pain. Again, he commanded her to run, and her legs obeyed him even as her mind tried to fathom his word. She heard two more bow-string thrums, then the sound of a sword slipping from its sheath as the shadows of the forest fell over her. The sounds of her father's sword and those of the orcs clamored and resonated in her mind. She kept running until her legs quit on her, and she fell to the ground in a part of the forest she did not recognize. Motherless for her entire life and now, she feared, fatherless, she lay on the underbrush and wept until exhaustion took her. She tried to backtrack to where she had entered the forest, tried to find some sign of her father, but she had become lost in her flight. She wandered the forest for a week, carrying a bow with no shafts and a knife she'd used only for skinning and whittling. Every night, she wept herself to sleep, praying to the fates for her father to return. It was on the last night of the first week that her weeping did not bring the sleep she had come to expect. Instead, it brought a young woman with a compassionate voice who calmed her, listened to her tale, and shared her tears. By morning, she stood beside this woman, this druid, Calla of the Sunglade, and looked upon the Glade of the Circle, the six, large stones at the center of a clearing that would soon come to be her home. Despite her years at the Glade, the relief from sorrow, sometimes even moments of happiness, that came from her lessons with Calla, Artemis never forgot her father or the lessons he'd taught her. She never forgot his smile, his laughter. She never forgot the creatures that he taken him from her. She took every opportunity to learn about the goblinoid races... their movements, their similarities and differences, their language. She found peace at the Glade, but someday she would avenge him. Calla did her best to temper Artemis' anger, teaching her that justice was a greater ally than vengeance. Artemis understood those lessons, but some cuts run too deep for the most rational words. As she grew and gained more independence, she would patrol the forest, hunting for food while secretly hunting goblins that braved the edges of the forest or peeked around the wrong rock in the foothills to the north. All the while, she struggled to remember the unique characteristics of each goblin and orc present when she lost her father to them. It was on one of her excursions into the foothills that Artemis became a "team." She was looking for goblins when she caught movement in the crags. With the practiced stealth of a hunter, she snuck up on her prey and sat in ambush, waiting for a target. Little did she realize that she had become the target herself. The beast, a gray cat with black stripes the size of a leopard, leapt at her. She took a hit but kept clear of the creature's fangs. She wrestled the creature to the ground and subdued it, her knife in her hand. Her eyes locked with the creature... and she recognized another predator robbed of its prey. She released the animal and turned back towards the Glade. The mist cat, a rare feline known for its relentless pursuit of its prey, followed her home. She named him Logan. Some time later, Artemis accompanied Calla on a trip to investigate strange activity near the ruined city of Mythrasil. When they arrived, they found a field of the dead... elves unseen in the forest for millennia scattered like broken twigs at the edge of the ruins. Thanks to Logan's sensitive nose, they found one elf -- another young woman -- still breathing. Wasting no time, they returned with her to the stones to see to her wounds. When the elf girl awoke, she could remember little of herself or her mission. She knew that elven leaders from her home -- an island she believed -- had sent her and the others to reconnoiter the ruins of Mythrasil. She could not identify her attackers, only that she had fallen quickly in the ambush. She barely remembered her own name, Tenaeryanlunamis Tarianven'tel... Tarian Silvermoon. Without a second thought, Calla offered her a place at the stones until her memory could regain its focus. Once lost in the woods without family, Artemis had found an older sister, perhaps even a mother, in Calla, and now a sister in Tarian... for the first time since that cold day in the foothills of the Ogre March, she had a home and a family. Saining Shadows When a Halfling scout by the name of Bosley Greencloak appeared at the Glade of the Circle, Artemis was at first distrustful of the man. Logan was aggressive towards the halfling, which put Artemis a bit off. Nevertheless, she accompanied her friends to the town of Meadowvale from which halflings were disappearing. The group investigated the town and the shop of Waldon Goodpipe, who Bosley believed to be involved. Artemis staked out the shop after hours, and was the first to see Goodpipe engaged in conversation with a goblin. She called in the team and they intervened, capturing Goodpipe and pursuing the goblin through the store. The goblin was stopped by one of Artemis' arrows just as it was entering a secret door in the shopkeeper's basement. The team followed through the door and down a long tunnel, through which Artemis tracked several goblins to an exit outside of town near a goblin camp. There they learned that Waldon had been selling off his own people to the goblins as slaves, after which they confronted the goblins, defeated them, and freed the Halfling slaves. All of the freed halflings were more than happy to present their testimony -- along with Calla -- to the mayor. Greenpipe was incarcerated pending a formal hearing before the mayor. A couple of weeks later, the trio awoke to an earthquake in the southeastern part of the forest. The animals told Calla that a crack had opened in the earth and evil things rose from beneath. The group investigated to discover the area teeming with a variety of giant, aggressive spiders, pretty much the only thing Artemis feared. After some strong words from Calla, the young ranger steeled herself and accompanied her companions through the spiders and to the crevasse. There they discovered that some campers, too curious for their own good, were about to become the victims of a humanoid, spider-like creature that Calla identified as an ettercap. The team overcame the creature and used all their skills to fill the crack to the best of their ability and prevent any more spiders from escaping the caves beneath. Although Artemis confronted her fear, she was not able to completely escape it, and continues to avoid that part of the forest on her patrols. A few weeks after the ordeal with the spiders, the trio learned that the people of Oakwood were having trouble fetching water from the Fairwinding River. The stories told of angry spirits along the best-traveled path. They traveled to the path and encountered a number of terrifying, intangible creatures that turned out to be illusions cast be a mischievous and territorial faerie dragon. Kip the Almighty, His Exalted Eminence, Highest of the High, and Lord Beneath the Trees -- as he introduced himself -- was quite put off by the fact that a group of water-bearers from the town had recently trampled all over a ring of mushrooms he had been cultivating to try to get in good with a couple of nearby pixies, Mariosella and Aeana. He decided that scaring the humans away would teach them a lesson about breaking other people's things. Artemis grew quickly annoyed with the creature and was quite ready to bring her bow to bear, but Calla staid her hand and convinced Kip to stand down. Kip was given promise that the villagers would build him a shrine, plant him some "yummy" fruit trees, and steer clear of his mushrooms in exchange for being allowed to retrieve much-needed water un-accosted. After the negotiations, the villagers reluctantly agreed to live by the terms of the agreement. Most recently, Artemis accompanied the team to investigate a group of elves setting up camp in the southern reaches of the forest. They arrived in time to help stem off a zombie attack, after which the trio, along with two of the elves, set off to track the creatures back to their source. After dealing with a few more zombies and, upon reaching the Fens, some territorial bullywugs, the group found and destroyed a barrow containing another group of zombies and skeletons, as well as a strange stone that seemed to be spontaneously animating them. During that time, Artemis became enamored with an elven warrior called Celdoran, who Tarian later took on as her student and squire. She repeatedly tried to convey her crush, but her complete lack of experience with romance led to repeated, often comical, failures. She continues to hold a torch for the young elf, but so far he has only described her as "strange and off-putting." Real World Artemis is a neutral good human female Beast Master Ranger. Her companion, Logan, is a grey-and-black striped Mist Cat, using the statistics for a panther. She specializes in Archery as her fighting style, and her signature spell is ensnaring strike. She is the scout and support fighter for her party, preferring to stay back from the fight and lob arrows while Logan joins the fray. She is less impulsive than Tarian, except where goblinoids are involved, but relies a little too much on Calla's direction over her own intelligence and insights. Despite everything she has gone through, Artemis is outgoing and the first to speak in most situations. She respects Calla, however, and will usually stop speaking when the druid begins to talk. Although she claims that spiders are the only things she dreads, her biggest fear is losing Logan, but she knows he loves to be in the fray and doesn't hesitate to send him in. Logan is a little more aggressive than Artemis realizes sometimes, and while she takes his nips and scratches to be playful expressions of love, she doesn't always realize that others don't share that view. Logan does not generally enjoy the company of halflings because he can sense their resistance to fear, which he finds unsettling. Category:Characters Category:Player Characters